I'm upgrading my rig to SB, so selling off certain parts to my brother, who will buy the rest of what he needs. See sig for current build. I'm giving him: ASUS P6TD2 i7 920 D0 Vertex 1 128Gb GTX295 GS1000 Case Everything is and will be kept at stock, so he doesn't need to OC/WC. I'll be replacing with i7 2600k, ASUS P67 Deluxe, Crucial C300128, GTX580, NZXT Phantom. I'm hoping to use EVGA's stepup program to get the mysterious 595.. which is rumored to be out in the next 2 months. Should I keep the Enermax 1050w? Or is there some new killer high w PSU out there right now? I'm not sure what PSU to recommend he uses, we''re ordering his list from Newegg over the weekend. I think the 1050w has been a bit overkill for my build up until now, or am I wrong? Also, I don't know whether to keep my RAM and have him order new, or sell him my RAM and buy new better stuff for SB. Any suggestions? Thanks!
I can't comment much but I'm pretty certain the Crucial C400 is out soon and may well be worth waiting that little extra for...
Yeah, unless you'd be happy with a R0 setup using something like the current SFs, either wait for the C400 (provisionally mid-late Feb) or the better spec'd 6Gb/s SF (provisionally March/April afaik)... ...& then the 6Gb/s intel & indilinx will be following some time after - whilst there's no indication yet of their speeds, i'd be very surprised if they also weren't significantly better than the C400. Other than possibly to rush out an upgraded version of the C300 before the others get into the 6Gb/s market, i really don't know why Crucial haven't pushed things more with the C400 as their own specs show it to be another slightly half-arsed version of a 6Gb/s SSD implementation - yet again, esp with the write speeds on the smaller models, though the max reads are up to 415MB/s vs up to 550MB/s for the replacement SF (& ~580MB/s for the 6Gb/s spec). So either there's going to have to quickly be a C500 to compete (which will cheese off people who bought the C400s) or they're going to be stuck trying to flog a less good SSD as SandyBridge (& it's limited 6Gb/s implementation - each controller only supporting a burst speed of 500MB/s) becomes increasingly prevalent in the 'off the shelf' market. Yeah, whilst i think that there are major advantages to the current SFs over the C300 - not least d.t. the write speeds, the issues people have had with cheap 6Gb/s cards, the lack of a generally affordable R0 option (so 2 or more SFs will be cheaper & faster than the equivalent sized C300), blah, blah... - i'm not tied to any particular controller brand or manufacturer, some real ground breaking solution from anyone would be great... ...& if the C400 appeared to be that then i'd happily say so. Okay, there will be room for another set of SSDs (at least from Crucial & SF - as again the intel & indilinx specs are unknown) on the 6Gb/s controller - maxing out the spec & improving small r/ws - but the nearer you are to that max on the next purchase, the more potential longevity before switching to pcie, HDSL or 6Gb/s raid solutions to get that next speed increase. Well, my personal belief is that, since this year will also see a significant drop in the cost per GB - taking SSDs properly into the mainstream - it will start making huge sense for both games & applications to be designed around the faster sequential speeds in a way that they currently aren't. Anyway, enough rambling... ...the point is that, along with not suggesting buying a C300 anyway, it's really just agreeing that, if you *really* wanted to 'go Crucial', it'd be better to wait.
Ouchhh... well I suppose I should've mentioned I already bought the C300 However after reading all that and other rumors about the new line, I'm really kicking myself now. Problem is - i don't know about Newegg's return policy, perhaps I could return it and get a new model But even if I did go that route - my brother needs the PC setup asap, so it's either that or turn back on a family member and find another buyer later. Since I use my PC as my primary job's workstation (web design business) I can't afford the time to do do fresh start-overs with my primary drive, installing software etc. Am I noob and not seeing a simple SSD primary drive cloning procedure? Even then, I'd have to find a new buyer for my C300, taking some sort of price hit. I thought the new SSD line was coming out mid-way through the year... ugh it was so thrilling first getting into PC building a little more than a year ago. Little did I know how much hair-pulling it'd be to turn into an upgrader!
Oh dear... i'm sorry to hear that... You are kind of correct that some of the SSDs are ~mid-way through the year, but it's one of those situations where, at least with the C400 -> V3 -> intel G3 6Gb/s refresh (no idea about the indilinx yet) there 'should' be no more than about 1.5-2 months between each step; with all 3 apparently being by end Q2. Okay, at some point you have to make a decision but, much as we have the general specs for the new SF & C400 out now (even though the C400 will be for sale first it's easy to see that the SF has better adopted the 6Gb/s spec), i'd expect to have them for the intel (& poss indilinx) before the SFs go on sale which would allow people to make a reasonable choice as to whether to buy or wait... [Slightly OT - it's another reason why i've been pro the current SFs as they're more robust in R0 arrays than the C300s, so an alt upgrade route is to look at getting a 2nd 3Gb/s SF which should give approx the general 6Gb/s SF drive speeds & with high iops if the controller can handle it (obviously the current ones will drop even further in price when the 6Gb/s ones are out)... ...& as none of the onboard 6Gb/s controllers support raid yet then the read benefit of the C300 would vanish in R0 by having to be on a 3Gb/s controller so that kind of eliminates any perceived advantage that the C300 would have... ...excluding putting them on expensive pcie controllers of course.] Not 100% about NewEgg as i'm in the UK, but the general rule that's always been talked about re suppliers & SSDs is that if you've opened the packaging, you've bought it... if it is possible to return it & you do want to look at cloning the HDD to a 'proper' 6Gb/s SSD in the future then, if your not confident doing it, you could always look at Acronis Disk Director/True Image or Paragon Migrate or... ...well, there's a few programs that can do the job. Okay, i'd always recommend a clean install as it guaranties that a load of potential issues are eliminated (& a fresh install of an OS is always good), but other people seem quite happy with the results of migrating...
Thanks for the info, While everything I'm hearing about the new upcoming lineups sounds enticing, a few other thoughts entered my mind.. First of all, wouldn't there technically be more justification for RAID users than traditional 1-SSD OS users? I have compared the specs though and out of the box it still boasts an additional (roughly) 150Gbps+ give or take. Another thing though is that given that I'm starting to get more and more into PC upgrading/building, I was tossing around the idea of building an entirely new PC - instead of upgrading my current for what would be the second time - come the end of the year, and base it on the new 2011 socket & cpus. This is only loosely based on what I believe is that SB will be being 'replaced' by the new socket, and will boast the "real performance jump" over what's out now. Again I could be misinterpreting, but in this scenario perhaps I could build this at the end of the year for gaming only - by which the new generation of SSD's will have already run and the best model would be available of this refreshing cycle. Unless the numbers are THAT good, perhaps I could be happy with my C300 until then, but who knows. I guess this is a reflex thought to comfort my bad purchase.. haha What would anyone else do in a similar situation? Also, about those power supplies lol
I wouldn't say the C300 was a bad purchase per se, its just not really a great time to purchase an SSD with new kit coming soon. It will still serve you well I am sure! A 920 is still a very very good computer, even if SB has just been released. Personally if I were you I would stick with it until 2011 socket comes out if you can - you will see a better gain un upgrading. It's your call of course... About the PSU - 1050w absolutely fine for, well, pretty much everything. I would say it is overkill indeed. If its the Enermax one think it is, its pretty much the best PSU around and you shouldn't need to consider a new one for a long time... If he wants a decent PSU he should be looking around 650w (I may be wrong but I don't see the point in overkill PSUs) and maybe slightly more if he is considering SLI at some point in te future.
Thanks Ljs, good to know about the Enermax. I remember feeling put off by the price, but just like the people said in the 'What's your Worst Purchase' thread in here, "anytime I tried to save money" lol. Anyways, yea 920 is fantastic but of all I'm doing it for power consumption. My latest electricity bill was higher than I'm willing to admit, and SB & GTX580 power consumption levels are fantastic in comparison. I'll take a look at the PSU Recommended list for that w range.
Assuming as you have a 1366 platform now, then you will have triple channel DDR3 whereas SB is spec'd for dual channel, so you will need new RAM for your new build. For a PSU the Antec Truepower New 650W is probably the best buy at that rating, around £60 from Scan.
So are you thinking of sticking with your setup now and then switching to lga 2011 come the end of the year? +1 for the enermax there great psu's, also if your worried about your power billing. why not just change your gpu to something less power hungry then upgrade the socket at the end of the year, hope I've got the right idea here as for a psu @ 650w antec and corsair are both psu's I would recommend and if your going a bit more say 750, check out xfx's power supply
